Exploring the Latest Research in Fueling Strategies for Endurance Athletes

Guest [00:00:06]: Hi, Patrick Davitt, and you're listening to run to the top podcast.

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Mollanssen, and this is the run to the top podcast. The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. We are created and produced by the expert team of coach atrunnersconnect.net, where you can find the best running information on the internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. There's always a lot of interesting research being done in the field of exercise physiology. Here to translate some of the takeaways from the latest research, specifically around energy expenditure and fueling strategies for endurance athletes, is Patrick Davitt, professor of exercise physiology at St. Joseph's University, who specializes in energy metabolism and fitness testing with various populations ranging from sedentary individuals to elite professional athletes. In this episode, specifically, we discuss takeaways from research on the low carb ketogenic dieting process for various types of runners, fueling with different carbohydrate beverages, the impact of pack weight and fatigue on energy expenditure and perception of effort and cognition in endurance athletes in running and hiking settings. What it means to be quote unquote metabolically flexible and the benefits of this flexibility in a running context as well as the metabolic and physiological impacts of various macronutrient combinations. Not only is professor David passionate about his research, but he's also an avid runner himself having most recently completed the e turned states 100 miler back in 2021, and Patrick brings a lot of excitement about the community to this conversation as well. So with that, let's get into it. Today's episode is sponsored by Magnesium Brake through from bi optimizers. Their industry leading magnesium supplement helps you sleep better and reduce stress. Head to magbreakthrough.com. Forward slash run to the top to learn more and save 10%. If you're looking for the most effectively dosed electrolyte drink for runners, check out element. It's loaded with everything you need to replenish your electrolyte balance, and you can get a free sample pack by going to drink lmnt.comforward/runnersconnect. Patrick

Guest [00:02:41]: Davitt is

Finn Melanson [00:02:44]: a pleasure to have you on the show today. There's a lot I wanna talk about, especially as it revolves around fueling for training and racing in our sport. You know, we'll we'll list a lot of your background in the show notes, but your professor at Saint Joe's, you were just talking offline. You have a you have a trail racing company up in the Hudson Valley, which is really cool. And there's a bit of research that you did at some point in the last couple of years that that caught my eye that's not quite feeling related that I wanna cover at the top here. Talk about the research you've done around pack weight and fatigue on energy expenditure and effort and cognition in ultra endurance athletes. I probably a minority of the listeners and viewers of this show are in the ultra endurance space, but A lot of people are hiking out there too. So I I do feel like it's applicable, and I just personally find it fascinating. So what were some of the takeaways there?

Guest [00:03:35]: Yeah. So first off, it's a it's a pleasure being on here. Thanks for having me on. And there's a there's a couple different avenues that I've been doing a little bit more related to pack weight related. And when I say pack weight, we can talk about a couple different things. One of them is looking at sort of, through hiker, someone who's even gone out on a day hike, where your pack's getting, like, £15, £20 plus and and very few people are running at that pace unless you're in the military, and I do some pack weight related to that where you're getting 50, 60, 70 pounds, but a lot of the stuff I'll do, I might use a pack at £40. I might use, you know, a weighted vest at £40 and looking at differences in energy expenditure. Some of the other avenues that I've gone down was I was working with ultimate direction. I got them to send me just a bunch of packs. They're, you know, like my favorite. They're they were my introduction and still to this day, my favorite pack company. Just once you break into the best world, it's there's just nothing like it. So I did a study where I was looking at £0, £3, £6, £9, and I had, you know, subjects run on the treadmill for an hour. And I had little hills and things like that built into the treadmill and I looked at energy expenditure, heart rate, their perception of effort, things to that nature. And we were sort of looking for what what I'll call an inflection point. So the idea would be there are a lot of assumptions in the world of, you know, energy expenditure, heart rate, calories, things like that that Hey, if if you go from 1 mile an hour to 2 to 3 to 4, you know, is your heart rate gonna go up in a similar manner? Is your calorie expenditure? How many calories you're burning gonna go up similar from 1 to 2 miles per hour or 2 to 3? Things switch over when you jog. So let's say we're starting a 5 miles an hour. If you go from 5 to 6, 6 to 7, it are things gonna change? So I wanted to look at that from a fixed speed or fixed pace position, you know, standpoint. So we varied the pack weight. You know, when I say pack weight, it was really we're using the ultimate direction vest you know, and we were loading them with no, nothing. We still have them wear it because in the research world, it's, well, if you have nothing on, but we also then wanted to see, well, if you are wearing something, £0, £3, £6, and £9. We wanted to look that if you keep increasing from, you know, £3 increments, is your heart rate just gonna increase in a linear manner is your energy expenditure, your oxygen consumption, you know, your calories burned, things like that. Even RPE, is that gonna go up in a similar manner? And what we showed was, no, that isn't really the case. Wow. Really, what we saw was from 0 to £3 you know, there really wasn't much of a difference. And then when you go from 3 to 6, we were starting to see some perception differences, but the heart rate wasn't actually different. When we went from £6 to £9, once you got above £6 and it's we started seeing significant, you know, you get into the research world, we saw significant differences in energy expenditure and heart rate and their perception of effort. Going from 3 to 6, perception of effort did start to change, but it was 6 to 9 where we saw this big jump. And now 3 were completely different than 9, but they weren't all different from 6, and then you look at 6 to 9, and you're starting to see some of those metrics really start becoming significant when you go from £6 to £9. And it's not that hard. If you're if you're in a racing world and we'll hopefully get into this a little bit today, one of the common themes that I always discuss when I present things when I'm talking about nutrition, if I'm talking to a team, if I'm talking to a runner, if I'm at a conference, is this idea of training versus competition. Like, race day is not training day. Training day is not your race day. So it's this idea that when people are going out and just training, they're carrying packs that very easily can be £6. If someone doesn't leave their keys and my buddy carries like a thick wallet, doesn't leave it in his car because he's afraid when we go to, you know, we were talking about Bear Mountain. You're you're sometimes when you're going in the middle of nowhere, it's like, yeah, you know what? I'll just take this stuff with me, especially if you're going out for 2 hours, 3 hours, things like that. And, you know, it's not that hard to get to £6, but what we wanted to see was we chose big increments because we wanna sort of take a a birds eye view of, hey, you know, it's unlikely that someone running in, you know, a a trail marathon, half marathon, or Ultra, is gonna really load their pack with £9, but we want to to look whatever range you think the weight might be, you wanna test beyond it. Because you wanna see what are the fringes of what someone might, you know, actually use. So we did start seeing a difference. Now that research, I wasn't really into the biomechanics, you know, even just we use I use run scribe of, like, foot pods, even the garment straps, you know, I'll use the polar. I'll use the garment. Garmen just inherently, you know, I wear the garment watch. We'll inherently give you those run dynamics. It's more than just dried length frequency, but it'll do leg, you know, yep, it'll do vertical oscillation, ground contact time, all these different things. So where I'm starting to get to is teasing out more and more where might those differences be where if you're gonna go for either a day hike or you're just gonna go out for a jog, not only looking, and if the study that I'm I'm setting up now is not just looking at, hey, from that £3 to £6 where we started seeing some differences, and I only had them running for an hour. Well, tons of people carry like a nay you know, naythans is like the one that I know. My buddy uses that one, but a lot of people won't wear a pack. They'll carry their water on their hands or they'll carry their cell phone and then they'll carry their water. You know? And it's like, well, 16 ounces of water a lot of those can carry 12 16. Well, that's a pound. You know, if you put like ID or you, some people put like some other things in then just the bottle itself, might be a pound pound and a half. Does holding that in your one hand, throw off, you know, your biomechanics where your swing to any degree that might add up to you burning more calories than normal. For people going out on a training run, that might not mean anything. But for someone in a race or or the fact that that might throw off your gate, are you more prone to injury when, you know, I live in Pennsylvania and they call it rock Sylvania, you know, so if there's a lot of jagged rock and and stumps and all these different things, you're you're I'm I'm starting to get to the point where I'm interested in how do these little tiny things affect not just your energy expenditure because that's sort of my bread and butter of what I study. How does that throw off your perception? And if you're going out there or you're already tired and then you go out for an hour run, do these little things add up? Can they add up to more than you think? And then then you get into the whole argument of that has nothing to do with oh, what am I bringing with me? What calories? And that's a whole different discussion, you know, and things like that. So It's a long winded, but, yes, when you start getting heavier packs, it's definitely gonna throw off. There are differences in energy expenditure because your body has to now compensate for all of that pack weight and there are nuances of and that's kinda what we saw from 6 to £9. It's it's enough weight where now it's throwing off your inertia and your momentum and your, especially your upper body that your brain isn't used to that type of dynamic, and it has to send out signals different from a neuromuscular recruit. It has to realign how it's recruiting your muscles because you now have more of a load to apply more force into your foot, which is really into your ankle and your knee and your hip and your spine. So your body has to make all these adjustments. So, yes, that stuff will alter your energy metabolism. 100%, it will alter alter your mental state It's kinda like in the running world. It's like, when you notice anything, if you have a pack on, kinda like if you have a hotspot, it's like, address that hotspot as soon as possible because by the time you have to address it, you're screwed. Like, that blister has already formed depending on where it's at, the race or the training run, you know, are you just gonna be able to pop it, throw a band aid, throw some duct tape, throw some glue, whatever it is? So it's like, when it comes to that path, I'm venturing down that road and I'm becoming really interested in in understanding how all of that works.

Finn Melanson [00:12:27]: One comment in one question earlier, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're you're saying that there's actually a lag in energy expenditure from perceived effort. So perceived effort, an increase in perceived effort is gonna come before an increase in energy expenditure.

Guest [00:12:43]: That's what we saw.

Finn Melanson [00:12:45]: That's fascinating.

Guest [00:12:46]: We see a rep rep, you know, rated RPE ratings of perceived exertion. There's a tip the typical, it's called the borg scale, 6 to 20 point scale. And then there's a modified one that's like, you know, 1 through 10 because most people know 1 through 10, but the original one was 6 to 20, The idea is, you know, 6 is you're completely rested and you slowly get a little bit, oh, moderate effort. Yeah. A lot of effort, you know, and then it becomes hard, very hard, extremely hard, plenty is hardest thing to do. If you multiply those numbers by 10, it gets you to 6200. What's general resting heart rate? 60 ish, you know, athletes can be a little lower. What's general max heart rate? 200 ish. So it's a really good scale to sort of look at the subjective thoughts of how hard do you think you are working? And then you look at your actual heart rate and your energy expenditure, and that's the objective measures. So we like to see both of those because you know, you know, as a as a runner and everyone who's listening, if you're a runner, bike or swimmer, anything like that, it's your body could be totally fine. You know, it's a question I texted my buddy this morning of a survey I wanted to do. Why do most people DNF you know, if you're in a race and things like that, is it because you didn't have the cardio respiratory capacity to keep running, or you just mentally just couldn't handle it. It's more than you thought. Does that lead to GI issues? You know, all of those things. The the brain is and the mind are very powerful. So that perception of effort in this study did come before a change in actual energy expenditure. And when I say a change, a significant change, you know, we're looking at statistical differences, stuff like that, and you get into that research. Jargon of the dreaded p value and all these different things. But

Finn Melanson [00:14:36]: Yeah. And and well, we we could we could go into a whole discussion about RPE and how to use that as a judge for, you know, training and racing. But the other thing that I wanted to ask you about, was there anything you found in this study or ancillary research about decision making on when to change your gate due to, like, pack weight. So for example, at a certain pack weight, based on RPE, based on energy expenditure, you should you should switch from, for example, a running gate to a hiking gate?

Guest [00:15:06]: I don't know yet. I didn't tease out. That's a really important question, and those are things that I'm now that I'm getting more into the foot pods, because I didn't use the foot pods in the pack weight with the 0369, which give me a lot more, like, running metrics. There's most definitely going to be some aspect of, you know, gate change. Random side note on that concept. And I know there's there's some studies that we can get into. This one study I did, I had them run for 3 hours. We can get into that later. One of the observations was they ran for 3 hours and, average distance was, like, 18 point something miles. So let's say, you know, 6 minute 6 miles an hour on the treadmill. So nothing crazy with 10 minute pace. We run it for 3 hours. They then got got off the treadmill. They had 1 or 2 minutes to sort of go to the bathroom, get a drink, and then we put them back on the treadmill at a 110% of their VO 2 max pace. Average pace, I'd have to go back and and and look at it, but let's say it's, like, 11 10 a half, 11 miles per hour on the treadmill. So and we basically said run until you can't run anymore. So there's a performance aspect. We're testing that, but one of the interesting observations to get to the question you just asked about when should someone think of changing their gate when you had all of and I had 1010 runners. So they ran in 3 different conditions. We can get into that study. I'd love to chat it had to do with the different cards. They came in. It was a crossover design. So they came in. All ten came and ran in one condition. They came in again, ran another, came in again, ran another. So 30, really 10 subjects, but they ran 30 different times. And in almost every single one of those circumstances, it was just a random observation. When you take them running from 6 miles an hour to 10 a half, 11, and, obviously, there's pluses and minuses. Some are more fit less fit. Their stride frequency, so cadence, how many steps per minute never changed. All they did was just increase their stride length. Which for a lot of people, maybe that's that sounds like it's the norm. For whatever reason, in my head, I didn't I never really thought of that, but it was like a weird observation that the brain just instinctively when you throw someone on a treadmill at almost twice, you know, at least 40% more of 50%. At least, like, 50, 70, whatever it was. Like, almost double their pace, their brain is just gonna instinctively have them run at the same cadence, and they're just gonna tell their muscles fire so that each step is more forceful. I find that extremely fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm looking to explore that because it's something that I've been thinking about more and it gets into this idea. I just had a a group of students who in the spring, I didn't publish this data. They did a a sort of a research project. Oh, man. We were looking at 1 mile an hour, 2 miles an hour, 2 a half, 3, 3 a half, 4 on the treadmill. It was, like, 1, 1 a half, all the way up to 4. So they were walking and then sort of to the point where you might need to jog, but they did it at 0, 2, 4, and 6, percent incline. And we recorded a variety of different metrics. And we're just creating this sort of Pandora of just linear trends. Where are the trends? What speed? What grade combination is causing that person's body. They wore a mask the entire time. So we know oxygen consumption. We're looking at breath rate, how many breaths per minute, heart rate. We're looking at all these different RPEs. So we can look at that ratings of perceived exertion. There's a typical whole body 1, and then I've in the literature, and then I've created for my lab a breathing one and a legs one. So it's like, well, even though your whole body might be an 11 out of 20, I feel like my legs are really heavy. So my legs are at like a 14. So we wanted to dive in and see in all of these different speed and grade combinations, where did the perception of effort? Where did the oxygen? Where did they start to go up? And then what I'm slowly starting to get into is Hey, is it eventually, I'm I'm not gonna repeat that state, but I'm gonna have people jog. So it's like that age old question, well, once you get to a certain incline, if you're running on the trails, or even just a steep hill, at what point should you switch over from jogging to like a power walk? You know, the downside of jogging is, you know, let's say the the the plus side of walking is it's mostly horizontal movement. Where you're not really vertically pushing your body up. That one foot is always on the ground throughout your gate. Jogging is you're leaving the ground. So there's a vertical displacement So that's extra force that you need to kick off with to push your body up. And when you're going uphill, now there's gonna be a point at which that trade off is like, of drastic difference, you know, when, hey, jogging is almost pointless. You're literally running, and you're just jumping up and down and moving forward a little bit. And that's where you'll see some of the best of the best when they go up, like, really steep hills and you see that more maybe in, like, the trail community, they're not running up them. You know, like, you know, not everyone's killing and Jeanette who can, like, just, like, exile just bound up a mountain. So that's and then I didn't analyze the data yet to look at changes in because that was a lot of data that we had collected. And we did notice that there are some specific points from that walking to incline when it might be good to trend, but I didn't look at any of the run dynamics, like cadence changes and things like that. But in general, we did peek at it, and it's just fascinating. Most of the time your cadence doesn't change. You just change how hard which then gets into anyone listening, if you're running like a 5 k, you know, my nephew's a a big runner. He runs up by Marist, and I'm talking to him all the time, and it's like, most of the time, Matt Fitzgerald is like a really big one. 8020 and he's written a couple other books, blog posts. He's big on. Once you get to, like, a decent level, if you if somebody tries to change your gate, they're probably gonna do more harm than they are good. You know, and when I say gait, I mean, like, stride frequency. So if someone tries to make you step really fast or to slow down, there's a reason why your body chose that. And one of the reasons why I think that that's a powerful thing is in the study that I did, I had these 10 runners just immediately start to run fast and all of them in and they were most of them, they were all ultras. Some of them ran 50 milers, 100. The one guy was gonna go and do the Tahoe 200. And then we had a lot of, we did have some marathoners and we had, you know, some Ironman, things like that. They just all instinctively kept the same gate. Like, when I say gate, they kept the same stride frequency, their cadence. So, anyway, fascinating stuff. So, oh, my thought there was if you're a 5 k and things like that, it's Yeah. Start working more on kicking off harder. Like, if you wanna get faster, most of the literature I have read about and most of the things I've seen in my lab are you just need to push off harder. And then you can get into the the mechanics of, like, when your leg swings and are you lifting up and where are you landing? But To run faster, you need to push off the ground harder.

Finn Melanson [00:22:41]: The start of the fall. And for many of you listening, it either means you're in the final hard weeks of training or you're beginning that transition to tapering. Thus, This is the time when maximizing your recoveries paramount to your success on race day. And what's one of the best ways to do this? Sleep. Sleep is arguably the best legal performance enhancing thing available to us. And one of the best ways to improve your sleep quality is by getting enough magnesium. Why? Because the research shows that magnesium lowers cortisol levels so you feel less stressed and it increases gaba levels which encourages relaxation at the cellular level, both of which help you enter and stay in a state of deep sleep for longer. That's why We recommend magnesium breakthrough by bioptimizers. Unlike generic supplements, their magnesium breakthrough contains all 7 unique forms of magnesium, which is critical for maximizing its effectiveness. Don't miss out on the most relaxing sleep ever with magnesium breakthrough. For exclusive offer for run to the top listeners, Go to magbreakthrough.comforward/run to the top and use the code run 10 at checkout to save 10%. This special offer is only available at magbreakthrough.comforward/run to the top. Hydration and electrolytes are something we all seem to focus on for the summer, but start forgetting about once the fall weather starts to creep in. However, maintaining electrolyte levels as the temps change and as you gear up for your big fall races is critical to your performance. Maintaining healthy electrolyte levels will help you maximize formances during your final big long runs and workouts, plus they aid in recovery so you can maximize the rebuilding process. And that's why we recommend all runners check out element this fall. It's loaded with everything you need to replenish your electrolyte balance with a 1000 milligrams of sodium. 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium and doesn't include anything you don't like or need, like, extra sugar or anything artificial. Even better they are currently running a special deal where you can get a free element sample pack with any order. To get this special offer and to make sure you're hydrating properly this summer, Head over to drinklmnt.comforward/runnersconnect. I we we should probably devote an entire episode of this. I my my my friend and I who are big fans of Trail running big fans of race out in Shamani called Ultra Trail Du Mont Blanc. We looked at some pretty in grant that it's probably a pretty crude way to analyze gate analysis, but it was looking at Cadence data on Strava, and we estimated that Francois Dane who won the race in 2017 spent approximately 40% of the race in a hiking gate. And even at that level of the sport, somebody who's running that race in under 20 hours, is still in a hiking gate, 35 to 40% of the race, which is incredible, and and able to maintain a pace in that 13 to 15 minute range even on the uphills, which I just found fascinating. But one of the thing that I wanted to ask you about before we get into nutrition, because I I do wanna talk at least for half an hour or so about nutrition is just your general thoughts on the whole quantified self movement as it relates to running. Like, I'm wearing one of these continuous glucose monitor patches, You've got the Aura ring. You know, there's other sleep devices out there, HR, straps, all that kind of stuff. I know we could spend a whole ton on this too, but, like, what do you endorse and where do you draw the line on what signal versus noise in 2023?

Guest [00:26:18]: Yeah. So fascinating question. And it's something that I'm a big techie guy. You know, I'm looking at, like, these runscribe foot pods, but I look at those the the general takeaway is if you said what's the best piece of equipment that I could advertise to a runner. Similar to what I talk about when it comes to a diet, what's the best diet, what's the best training plan? It would be whatever technology gets that person to run more consistently. You know, I'm learning in this field and just the running world that when you look at the greats, there's a ton of different schools of thought on training modalities. So it's, hey, this technology, this, that technology, you know, is Garmin better than Polar, you know, is Sunta well, they're now new, and then you've got all these others when it comes to shoes. Oh my gosh. You can get into the whole different gamut there. And What I'm finding for the best of the best is just the consistency. It's like, hey, if I wanna go from a marathon to an Ultra, know, like, what what should I do? And it's like, well, the simplest solution would be, well, you're gonna have to run for longer. Like, you're gonna have to do that in a race. So even if we didn't know anything about training, just intuitively, we would say, well, you're just gonna have to put in more time on your feet so that your body knows what it's like to be able to endure, like, an extra couple of miles past the 26 mile marathon. You know, and then the technology can get into, well, who are we dealing with? Are we dealing with weekend warrior, someone who even might be really serious and they wanna set a PR in a marathon, you know, but they're not, you know, Elia Kipjogi. They're not running like a 2a half. They're not qualifying for Boston or something like that. So most of the time, do I like the technology 100%. And, like, I love Garmin. I just like the layout. I know a lot of people at Polar I keep saying polar. It's pol everyone says polar, but one of my friends is like a big national rep for their team pro system, and he corrects me. Know, he's like, it's polar. So, anyway, the idea would be if I'm gonna use that, like, I'll never I'll get angry at myself. I've treadmill desk at work. I'll walk anywhere from 5 to 15 miles in a day. Once a semester, I'll always walk like a random marathon, things like that. Even when I'm walking on that treadmill, I will be angry at myself if I only have this for heart rate. It's just maybe it's my arm here, maybe it doesn't like me, but I don't trust it and I do trust the chest trap. So, you know, but the reason Why is because this will be very variable. What I teach in my research methods classes, if someone's listening and it comes to, are you gonna use a continuous glucose monitor? Are you gonna use you know, an aura ring. Hey, when I remember to to charge it, I'm gonna use it just because it's right next to my nightstand. But my Garmin watch, your Apple Watch, your Polar Watch, your SUNTo Watch, your Fitbit, they're all gonna record sleep. Do you really do most of your listeners and most people on earth care whether the watch says you got 3 hours 1 minute of REMSleep versus, well, I actually got 3 hours 15 minutes. Does someone really care about that, or is it more important to get a device that's just reliable and consistent? Because if I'm your true if I'm a coach, I'm a nutritionist, a strength coach, run coach, whatever it might be, I'm gonna bring you and look at test. I'm gonna have you do a fitness maybe, a flexibility test. I'm gonna assess your diet, look at your calorie expenditure. What's your max heart rate? If I use the same piece of equipment, whether that equipment is 100% accurate or not basically tells us, can I compare you to the best runners in the world? Where do you stand from a percentage standpoint? What I'm more interested in is is it relatively accurate and most of them are When I test you now and I test you 8 weeks from now when you went through your training program, is this device going to tell me that you changed? Like, if your fitness improved, will the device notify me of that? I can follow trends like whatever accuracy this Aura ring has or my Garmin watch has. And by the way, they are different. I'll literally read 1 and be like, I got no rem sleep. And then the other one's like, hey. You got a good amount of rem sleep. I'm not arguing against either of them. The idea would be I'm gonna follow the trends of the ring. Like, hey. How did I feel? Look at your sleep. Well, I should have gotten more sleep. You know what? I I did fidget a lot last night. It wasn't as good of a quality sleep. But you have then have to look at Courtney Dahlwater. And it's like, I think she only wears a Timex Watch when she trains for Ultra's, and she's setting, like, world records just dominating the Ultra world. And she's the most jovial, happy person who just runs a lot. She does a structure She's, like, not into technology, and she seems to really like it. I know plenty of people who are like, I just don't like it. If if your device ruins your day or ruins your workout, I would say then you probably shouldn't use that device because the idea is The device isn't running the miles for you. You're running the miles. You know, the device is really good at telling you, and they're getting more sophisticated, giving you you know, in Garmin is now releasing endurance scores and you're looking at all these different things. So it's like, yeah, it's a tool. Use it as a tool. I love training heart rate. You can get into nuances when it comes to someone who's doing, like, lactate training because you're going, like, barely above it, barely below it. So you might wanna assess that or be really accurate with that. But for the general individual, most people, even, like, really fit people, it's like, find a device that you like using that gets you to run more consistently. And it's like, not all your miles are gonna be at a moderate intensity. Most of them shouldn't be. Know, if you follow, like, that whole eightytwenty, it's like a lot of your runs are gonna be a lower intensity. And then you mix tempo work, pills, pace, you know, you could do fart lick, like, modern intensity, whatever. And it's like, just use something that you can keep pace with, use something that you can, you know, keep heart rate with, it tracks your sleep, follow it, do whatever's gonna allow you to be consistent and consistently move. That make sense? It's a long winded answer.

Finn Melanson [00:32:42]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Moving on to some nutritional questions. I wanna make sure I get in. I've heard A couple of phrases that I've also seen you use. The first is metabolic flexibility. And I'm not sure if it was you, but I've I've I've seen this elsewhere

Guest [00:32:59]: in the

Finn Melanson [00:33:00]: podcasting sphere, the phrase glycogen sparing.

Guest [00:33:04]: Well, those are 2 very different things.

Finn Melanson [00:33:05]: 2 very different things, but I I wanna talk about both because I I wanna talk about, you know, how we're using all of these macronutrients, you know, in endurance exercise settings. What, first, what does it mean to be metabolically? Like, in lay terms, does it mean to be metabolically flexible?

Guest [00:33:20]: Yeah. So when we use the term metabolism, metabolism is the breakdown of food stuff when we say food stuff, we mean macronutrients. And when we say macronutrients, we really mean carbs or fats, proteins, don't really break them down for energy. Metabolism is the breakdown of those macronutrients food stuff to derive energy. When we say energy, we mean ATP, adenosine triphosphate. It's the energy currency of the body. It's the it's the it's the phosphate bonds know, adenosine triphosphate. There's 3 phosphates. It's the breaking off hydrolysis of the cleaving of those phosphates off that releases energy, and it's that release of energy that contracts your muscles. So if we wanna run faster, we have our metabolism has to increase. So we have to break down more nutrients for that ATP or that energy. Metabolic flexibility is and you're gonna almost see, like, some slightly different schools of thought on, like, how we specifically define it, but in general, it's What does it mean to be flexible? You know, it increased, like, someone who's very flexible has an increased range of motion. So if we use that concept, It's, well, when you're doing a variety of different intensities, how flexible are you at switching from fat and or switching to carb? As someone naturally trains and as someone becomes just generally more fit at rest and during exercise, they're gonna be able to burn more fat. So a metabolically inflexible individual doesn't typically have a really high capacity to burn fat. The other idea behind it is when you all of a sudden do very rapid intense exercise, somebody's just just randomly jogging and someone says, hey. I'll race you to the next, you know, light post or 8 station, whatever. You just immediately start sprinting metabolic flexibility is someone who has the capacity to tap into the fast burning stores, which are typically your glycogen, how how quickly they can tap into those. And then when they're done that sprinting, how quickly they can go back to burning the fat, burning the the much more abundant, you know, fuel. Does that make sense? So it's the flexibility and your ability of using fats versus carbs.

Finn Melanson [00:35:41]: Okay. That makes sense to me. And I guess I do wanna understand the difference from glycogen sparing because, like, I'll I'll hear the phrase glycogen sparing when when I hear people talk about, you know, the protocols around fat adaptation. I've even started to hear it used for people that are taking, like, ketone mono esters during competition. So what is the difference there?

Guest [00:36:01]: Well, first off, let me say that in general, I don't know, 95% 97%, maybe even 99% of your listeners and everyone who's not listening will never spare glycogen. Like glycogen sparing is almost nonexistent, and it's something that I correct all the time. Does it exist? Yes. But is it rare? Extremely. Ask for you, you can droop who is, like, the professor for years, he is one of the pioneers and probably did just as many studies on how many carbs can we shove into your body What mixture of carbs can we shove into your body from no carbs, 30 grams an hour, 60, 120 up to, like, 240 grams and he just wanted to see how many grams of that drink you can burn. And what he also showed was when he assessed muscle glycogen It didn't matter how many carbs you were. Once someone hits a moderate to a high or vigorous intensity, doesn't matter how many carbs you're giving them. They're not gonna change muscle glycogen. Muscle glycogen breakdown is contractile dependent. Meaning, when you force and contract the muscle at a vigorous intensity, if it needs that ATP or energy, like, right away, it's gonna pull it from glycogen. Doesn't matter if you're shoving fats. Doesn't matter if you're shoving ketones we can get into. Doesn't matter if you're shoving gatorade or you know, any of the other body armor you whatever you wanna consume. I see the Morton stick, you know, thing in the back. That won't spare your muscle glycogen. If anyone has an objection to that, we can give my email out at the end and I'll show them the asker you can droop and the other studies that literally are pumping 200 grams an hour into these athletes and their glycogen utilization is not different than someone who's getting 30. What? And we does that make sense?

Finn Melanson [00:37:59]: It does. Yeah. It's

Guest [00:38:00]: something that I hear all the time, and people love to tout it when it comes to, hey. We're gonna promote fat burning, and we're gonna spare muscle glycogen. It's like, no, you're not. What you are going to spare is liver glycogen and blood glucose. So the idea would be if you well, we can get into that if you want, but you can spare liver glycogen but you're not gonna spare muscle glycogen. And muscle glycogen is the storage form of glucose, which is the main carbohydrate that you eat in food that you're gonna store in the body. It's your blood sugar. That's blood glucose. Glucose is what you store in the liver, and it's what you store in the muscle. The liver is what you store it for to then break it down and keep the blood glucose stable. When you store it in the muscle, Once it's in the muscle, it never leaves. You store it for like a a bank account. When you need high amounts of energy now, it breaks that glycogen down. That you can't really spare.

Finn Melanson [00:39:01]: I I I appreciate the defining of the terminology. And the reason I asked those questions is you know, I know you've done a lot of research into the low carb, ketogenic dieting process in ultra endurance athletes. That's my camp. That's my tribe. That's my camp of people. I find that fascinating. I do wanna be respectful of the audience, though, because a lot of the audience are people who are training for sort of the 5 k to marathon road distance. So my question is based on the research you did among the ultra endurance crowd for this low carb dieting lifestyle approach to endurance training, were there any takeaways that we could reliably extend to, the shorter distance road running pursuits?

Guest [00:39:42]: Yes. Absolutely. So the I I'm assuming the main study you're referring to is the faster study. So that was my post doc. I was up at University of Connecticut with Doctor Jeff Volick. That was my postdoctoral fellowship. I helped write the IRB, all that stuff, get it off the ground, you know, the idea for that, ironically, the paper in that showed that those athletes were consuming 10% or less of their calories from carbohydrate, like almost nothing. And these were elite elite. They flew people in from all over the country. Some people came in from other countries. The idea was even in that study, their glycogen stores eventually became the same as the high carbers. And then when we assessed muscle glycogen again after 3 hours of running, the glycogen breakdown was the same. They didn't use that glycogen. There's, like, whole theories of what happened, but the muscle literally just broke it down. They had the same amount to start, and then they broke it down. So with that, the idea would be the people are saying, alright. You're good. If you're an ultra endurance person, you're not really running at as fast of an intensity. So you're a little bit lower. It makes sense to burn a little bit more fat because it's a long lasting energy supply, and you're gonna be out there long lasting, running a ton of miles. How does that translate into, you know, me, if I'm running a 5 k, half marathon, 10 k, you know, whatever, even if I'm running a mile and things like that, that's where what I'll do is I'll bring in this concept of training versus competition. One of the reasons and that's that's how I got into Ultra is that study when I was up at Yukon, just the coolness of trail runners in the ultra world, they were just so fun and cool and they like just loved punishing their body and putting it through like the ringer. And I've been running generally off and on my whole life. That kinda got me into that world. But when you asked any of the low carbers on race day, What do you do? Not all of them, but a majority of them do consume more carbohydrates than normal. And if someone said, well, what's the point of that? Well, I'm racing. This is my test. I'm looking to perform optimally on race day. There's no DNF on training day. You know? It's like if you're supposed to go out for a 10 mile run or a five mile run, and you only run 9 miles or you only run 4, you don't get an ultra sign up DNF like listed after your name. It's only if you, like, out yourself on social media. So the idea would be even in that group, is there a benefit that's running 5 k, 10 k, you know, whatever, Is there a benefit to modifying your carbohydrates and becoming more fat adapted? In general, yes. Almost everyone on earth should want to be more fat adapted because we have ton of tons of fat. Yeah. 1, you become less reliant on dietary carbohydrate. Because you can store as much glycogen you want in your muscle, but if your blood glucose drops, your brain doesn't care what's going on in your muscle. Brain cares about what's going on in the blood, and it's gonna say, I don't have enough energy in the blood. And how much energy are we talking about talking about, like, a teaspoon and a half of sugar, you know, like 6, 8 grams. It's like two packets of sugar. That's how much sugar is in your blood, like in normal rested, like, homeostatic, my brain's happy state. If that starts dropping, Well, then your brain's not gonna be happy. So what does the low carb ketogenic diet do? Is it allows a lot of your body to maintain and use more fat for fuel. So it by using more fat for fuel, even at rest or low intensities, what that does is it gets all these random tissues, like the heart is a really big one. It's gonna it loves using fatty acids, and you're just gonna really ramp that up. But if especially even muscle at lower intensities or or moderate intensities where you might not be pulling a lot from your glycogen, you're gonna be pulling from blood glucose. So if you're more fat adapted, you won't spare the muscle glycogen we've already established, but you will pull less of the glucose from the blood. And one of my college professors, Doctor Doctor Malcolm Wafford, the title of his advanced nutrition book was keeping the brain happy, and that is your sole goal. Keep your brain happy and the main way to do that is to maintain your blood glucose. So if someone goes out on random training runs, and they don't eat anything in the in the morning, let's say, or they eat very little, they're going to run. And in that run, they might not feel as good as they normally do but then after that run, everything that they just did is going to tell the body, hey, we need to up regulate our mitochondria. We need to up regulate our transporters and enzymes and all these different machinery components that burn more fat. So if, you know, you know, Pat decides to, like, trick us tomorrow, we're gonna be ready because we're gonna be able to sustain and handle that lower intensity run on a lower carbohydrate diet. Does that make sense?

Finn Melanson [00:44:58]: Yeah. And one thing I wanted to ask you off that, just based on the research you've done, have you noticed at all that independent of diet as you start to deal with athletes that are, you know, doing, for example, Ultra endurance events training for that type of demand for a longer period of time, their metabolic characteristics are different independent of diet. Like, they are more fat adapted purely based on the type of training they've subjected themselves to over the

Guest [00:45:25]: course of,

Finn Melanson [00:45:25]: like, 5 years?

Guest [00:45:27]: Yes. And that's where you get into, like, film acetone, you know, is really big. They someone who's in that ultra endurance, and you get into, like, probably Ironman and things like that, they just put out so many miles. Not to say. I mean, my you know, people who are running cross country in high school might be running eighty, ninety miles, like, things like that. So it's not like they're not putting in miles. But it's just those low intensities. They're just going out for the Ultra community for so many hours. They just overload their musculature and the physiology so much for so long that it just really harnesses and adapts to that low carbohydrate, not not low carbohydrate, to a higher fat capacity. Regardless of what of diet, that's kinda what your question, because I didn't wanna say low carb, doesn't matter when you're eating, if you just stay constant and keep training, especially in the ultra world, you're gonna become more fat adapted. What's the difference between the low carb? And then you don't have to be keto. The the benefit of the keto, not everyone goes keto, but the benefit of the keto would be on a longer run or a harder run when your blood glucose does drop, if your ketones in your blood are elevated enough, that also keeps your brain happy.

Finn Melanson [00:46:44]: Yeah.

Guest [00:46:44]: I should know the stat, but your brain can most your brain relies almost exclusively on glucose. But it can rely like 60, 70% on ketones. So that's where some people will supplement them. It's trying to provide like a bonk proofness Stuff like that. Depending on the ketones, ketone salts are more tolerated even though they don't taste that good. Key tone esters last a lot longer, but they taste like garbage. Like, they're the most bitter thing you'll ever taste.

Finn Melanson [00:47:11]: I know.

Guest [00:47:12]: So, you know, it's a trade off. It's but the number one thing is if someone has a race, even if you're an elite athlete, if you have a race, like, far off in the distance and when we say far off, depending on their, you know, listeners, so it could be you know, 18 weeks, 20 weeks, like, you know, many months out. I would say almost I'm not recommending you do it, but it's like, maybe do yourself a favor and try to do a run where you didn't eat. And you have to understand that it might be okay if you don't like the way you feel during that run. Most of you will probably acknowledge I don't like how I feel during many of my runs. So the idea is What's one more that might adapt your body to be able to burn more fat and handle more fluctuations at especially lower intensities? Maintain general, you know, energy, focus, and things like that. One of the number one things you read from an anecdotal standpoint or in the research When people do try random lower carb, I'm not saying cut them all out. Just don't follow this ninety gram per hour if you're going out and running 2 hours is they just spontaneously eat a little bit less They regulate their food consumption and they just generally have energy a lot of the times. That's like the number one thing I read is people just, I just kind of have energy all the time. It's like, yeah, glucose is toxic to your body in high amounts in your blood. The number one cause of amputation and blindness in this country is too high blood sugar. So it's like you have 2 packets of sugar in your blood. I heard Peter Atia. He's got a podcast called Drive, and he referenced. He said, what makes you be a diabetic? You just double it. You just add 2 more packets of sugar. Let's say you're at 4. Now you're diabetic. Well, people will consume 10 to 15 packets of sugar in, like, one sitting. One of the subjects in that faster study up at Yukon, what he was on the high carb, he said he ran triathlons just so he could eat a whole bag of sour pets kits.

Finn Melanson [00:49:15]: I was just gonna say is is is one of the things that, like, the running community has to look up, or even if based on appearances you look like, you're in good shape just based on the amount of, like, sugar content you're injecting into your body via gels and and mixed drinks, etcetera, during competition. Is that is that like sort of long term diabetic concerns something that the community has to worry about?

Guest [00:49:37]: My number one question, if you ask any student, that I've ever told, they would say, well, it depends. You know, should it generally be something that you might wanna pay attention to? Yes. You know, whether people follow Tim Noakes. Tim Noakes is like a big advocate of, you know, born born to run. Like, no, not born to run. I forget it.

Finn Melanson [00:49:56]: I got it right there.

Guest [00:49:57]: Who are running? That's it. Yeah. So he came out and said, I'm sorry. Like, I still have type 2 diabetes, and you know, I run, like, as many miles as anyone out there. There are athletes that are gonna develop certain things. And depending on who you are, there's going to be some and all these different things. For me, most of what I am gravitating towards, and the reason I like that Ultra Endurance is it's just that concept of endure, like, you know, like, life in general is a heavy burden. So it's like, you have to endure throughout life and most of what we're finding is a lot of people, when they go out and endure these miles, the only reason I signed up for the Eastern States 100 back in 2021, I had done a 50 before that. To this day, I've never run a formal marathon. Signed up for 50 miler back in 2016. You know, did it. I got that bug from the Ultra Group up at Yukon. One of the reasons I like it is just that challenge and just to endorse. So when I'm going out, it's why wouldn't you want to be more fat adapted? The more you are consuming super high, you know, glycemic, fast absorbing carbs, the more dependent on them you are. We've seen this time and time again, you know, and what what's the general recommendation that you hear from a lot of the people who are pushing them? Well, you can train your gut to, like, handle them. And it's like, I already have to train my body and my mind to, like, adapt to a lot of these other things. If there's another way, not that we're saying you have to go this way, it's like just maybe consume a little bit less carb in 1 or or 2, you know, at least 1 of your training runs a week and see what happens.

Finn Melanson [00:51:44]: So if if I'm understanding you correctly, are you are you an advocate for runners of any kind experimenting with and and following to the best of their ability of this low carb high fat protocol?

Guest [00:51:56]: What do you mean when you say protocol? Diet. Not necessarily. Okay.

Finn Melanson [00:52:02]: Now and

Guest [00:52:02]: that's where you get into I can't remember the there's a group. VESPA, I think.

Finn Melanson [00:52:09]: VESPA Endurance. Yeah.

Guest [00:52:10]: Yeah. So VESPA is really big on modulating when you're consuming a certain type of diet. It's like for the most part, if you're gonna go out on a high intensity, tempo run, you know, hills. You're gonna do, like, sprints. I'd probably never recommend you don't consume carbohydrates. You know, because part of those runs is to get through them, and you don't necessarily want to bump during those runs. It's a lot of the other times when you're gonna and that's not gonna that's gonna be a small percentage. So do I advocate a a lower carbohydrate diet in general? Probably. For most people that I would ever meet. There's many people who it's like, you might not do well on that. There's just some people we just don't know. For people to say, I know exactly what you need to eat as someone with a PhD in nutritional physiology. It's like, I don't think that person really understands metabolism. The more you work with a client, the more you'll be able to modulate and the and the the more fit someone gets, the more similar they're probably going to be in regards to how many calories they're burning, what's their power output, you know, how many strides per minute, stuff like that? How many how many, you know, what how many grams per minute of of glycogen are they burning? They're gonna narrow that gap but for the general public, it's like, yeah, most of us could probably benefit from eating less carbs. And if you ask most people do you think you should consume less sugar? Whether you're someone running eighty miles a week or not, most people will probably say, probably. That would be my guess. I don't know. So I would advocate that that's different. When you say lifestyle, like, just follow a lower carb diet, I would say follow a diet that's less processed and less fast absorbing carb. Like, I eat oatmeal. I love oatmeal, like, in the morning. That might be my go to. There's random supplements if I'm on the go. You know, random things, you know, that I did another study on, like, slower digestion carbs, stuff like that, you know, like the live study, things like that, I'll do that. But would I advocate that people adopt training regimens where when they are performing lower intensity bouts that they consume carbohydrates, or they try a potentially carbohydrate free session? Yes. I would be confident in advocating that.

Finn Melanson [00:54:34]: Fascinating.

Guest [00:54:35]: Not a week before your race, not 2 weeks before your race. So never change, you know, your diet on race day is like the sports nutrition Montra.

Finn Melanson [00:54:46]: 2 more trends. I would love to hear you comment on. 1, I'm starting to see some of these nutritional sports nutrition companies incorporate, let's call it 2 to 5 grams of protein. Somewhere in that neighborhood into their jails because they're they're claiming that there's some research coming out showing that intro run protein supplementation will help facilitate recovery on the other side a little bit faster. What what are your thoughts on that? Have you seen any similar research?

Guest [00:55:18]: Or Yeah. There is here. Not only during. I just edited this one exercise physiology textbook and and the endocrine and then this sports nutrition chapter brought that up a lot And the the the if anyone's interested in reading about a lot of if they're really interested in sort of nerding out about those general types of topics by far, hands down, look up international society of sports nutrition, ISSN, They are the latest and greatest leaders. Most of them are both PhDs and dietitians. They're the ones who are literally doing the research. That's providing any of these recommendations. So ISS And International International Society Sports Attrition. They'll have position stands. They'll have whole position stands on protein don't think they have any they'll talk a little bit about protein supplementation, but I I don't know enough of the literature to say how much of a benefit, but in general, yes, not only during, but even before it's like consume some branch chain amino acids, essential amino acids, you know, even if you're going to get some protein, those amino acids, unless you're going out, even if you are, but Most people aren't going out for 3 hour runs like that often. You know, a lot of people will go out 45 minutes, 30, 45 an hour, hour a half, maybe 2 hours Like, there's not that many people. There's not that many people in the ultra endurance community. It's growing exponentially, but it's still a small percentage of the population. That runs. Know, when you look at most of these big fifty mile races, it's a paltry amount of people compared to the New York City marathon. You're dealing with, like, 40 to 50,000 people. So the concept would be most of the literature indicates here's the here's the here's the the sort of flip side would be is there any literature to show that it's harmful or maybe affects gut GI? And that, I haven't seen him. That I haven't seen anything to show. Hey. If you take some, essential amino acids like before you're run, that has been shown to benefit you post exercise. You know, they talk about this anabolic window. Most people only think of, like, tearing your muscles and then rebuilding them in the weightlifting world. And it's like, every step you take when you run, you're tearing your muscles. There's micro tears, but that's okay because that's going to overload the musculature and the physiology, and that's what's going to be what you adapt and then make stronger. You're gonna repair them and rebuild them. So it has been shown. Yes. In general, I don't always pursue it, but there is there there does seem to be data. There are data to support either during. I I haven't read as much about there before. I haven't read as much about during, but that they will provide you with those amino acids. And and I don't I haven't read much literature on the mechanisms, like, why? You know, is it you're not really you're probably not really sparing Yeah. Burning most of those. There are some amino acids that are, you know, very gluconeogenic or you're gonna break them down and use them for fuel, but it might just give you that amino. It might maintain and sustain your amino acid pool. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. If you took a protein and you broke it down, you eat steak or drink milk or whatever, you even eat bread and the protein in there, break it all down. Eventually, it's made up of a bunch of amino acid that are just formed together and then, like, foiled coiled in a coronary structure as big structure. So in general, sure.

Finn Melanson [00:58:59]: One last question. It it's kind of a fun question looking out into the future. I'm sure there are many answers to this. I'd love for you to pick just one What's one of the most interesting questions in the endurance fueling space that in your opinion remains largely unresolved in terms of clarity, but you're excited to see it solved for in the next, let's call it 5 to 10 years and why.

Guest [00:59:26]: In the nutrition world? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Well, I mean, ketones are making a break in waves, but I I'm still fascinated with carbohydrate, like the car the amount of carbohydrates you consume. Take someone like Zach Bitter. He, on most of his day, he's, like, defying things. I mean, the guy set on his hundred mile records. He's running, I don't know what his pace was. Like, 6 6:30 something for, like, a hundred miles straight, and he didn't deviate, like, more than a few seconds off of his pace for all laps of his under mile loop. He's like a perfect case study, but he's eating mostly low carb And then on race day, he's bumping up his carbs. And then I read reports that he actually prefers low carb post race, and he claims that it's actually aiding in his recovery. That, I don't know. I'm just fascinated, you know, I mean, it's funny because someone who's in the nutrition my PhD is in nutritional physiology and biochemistry. Lipid metabolism, doing stable isotope tracers to be able to track and identify, hey. You just drank, and that was, like, one of the big studies that I did. A couple of years ago with with, generation you can't. I wanted to track their now live steady, you know, slow digestion I can analyze that drink and give you that drink and then give you a regular fast absorbing multidextrin And then I can literally then have you run. I had them run for 3 hours, and then I collected their breath. And I can analyze the breath and determine Here's how much they call stable isotope tracers. Carbon 13, you know, it's got an extra neutron. Carbon 12 is like the most abundant. Like 1 to 2% of all carbons in the universe are the stable ice cream. I can track how many grams of that drink did you burn per minute? And what that study showed me was we still don't really have a good grasp for years in the nineties and the early 2000 And we've just been pushing carbohydrate and particularly sugar at athletes to try and maximize performance. There's tons of studies. They were there was this one review paper where they were giving, like, 300 grams an hour, which is a ridiculous amount. And once you get above 60, you're not really seeing any performance benefits, but yet we're still hearing people just try and shove carbohydrate, you know, in. I give a talk when I present conferences, small workshop, and it's called the carbohydrate conundrum is more better than enough. You know, and the idea is finding out what is enough in my opinion is, like, what I'm still fascinated in because people still don't agree on it. Like, I'll go to my daughter's field hockey or lacrosse games or even practices, and you've got all these kids that have just big giant bottles of sports drink. And it's like, hey, you're the one that I want to become more metabolically flexible. Yeah. You know, and it's like, even if they're just running and cross country and things like that, it's I still think there's a conundrum. And and and I would love to give you an answer that's going deep into the, you know, the complexes of the universe, but I still think we don't know as much. It I'm getting I I'm a professor in exercise physiology. I run the exercise physiology program at St. Joe's University, and I've always taught in exercise fizz or exercise science departments. And the reason is I think nutrition is getting really annoying. Like, even sports nutrition, for the elite of the elite, you're gonna work with someone and they're gonna keep fine tuning it. But for the general public, it's most of us could probably eat less processed crap, much of which is probably sugar based and we would probably see huge benefits, not only in our training and our performance, but also in our everyday mood, in our sleep, all this stuff. So it's like it's kinda hard to there you know, it's actually fascinating, creatine. Yes. Creatine is, like, on the verge of creatine's always been big. It's creatine phosphate. Our body naturally produces creatine. We store it in our muscles. You can get a lot of it from a variety of different things. It's a combination of amino acids.

Finn Melanson [01:04:04]: Well studied.

Guest [01:04:05]: It's well studied from the standpoint of energy metabolism. We're seeing a lot of studies come out on creatine and the brain from like a a concussion, TBI, So, like, potentially even at, like, a dementia all time, creatine is is showing to be a lot more than it's cracked up to be. Oh, if I had to maybe give you something like that, but it's like, hey, I'm curious to see what's going on, from a creatine standpoint, because it's I don't know. It it's fascinating. There's a there's an emerging literature outside of just energy metabolism.

Finn Melanson [01:04:41]: I'm glad you mentioned creatine. If we had talked 12 years ago, you would have caught me in the midst of my body building, football, craz, era, and creatin you drink creatine like you drank water. It was just like what you did to help with, you know, building muscle. I really like it in the running space there too because I I've also heard anecdotally that it can help sort of, buffer, like, your joints? Is there is there some research showing that it helps, like, if you have, like, if you, like, if you high, it helps, it helps re retain water. So there's some sort of benefit to, like, lubricating the joints in a sense?

Guest [01:05:14]: So mostly in males, females don't tend to retain the water as much as the males do.

Finn Melanson [01:05:22]: Okay.

Guest [01:05:22]: I don't know if part of that has to do with the concentration of creatine that gets stored. I think I if I re recall correctly, I was just reading it in this XFizz textbook. It the idea is they might already maximize their creatine stores, like, more males do. So they typically don't have to worry as much about when you're creating either loading or just maintenance phase. To try and get as much water in and things like that. I mean, hey, that would potentially make some sense

Finn Melanson [01:05:55]: Yeah.

Guest [01:05:55]: From from a because when you say, you're you're thinking like force force buffering. I was almost thinking, like, you know, I mean, creatine's not really gonna buffer, like, any lactate or things like that. But, you know, I I I'm still the carbohydrate is fascinating. Like, why most people I know. And it all started, like, this whole history. When I give presentations, a lot of this started from I was like, I can't remember which Boston marathon, like, in the early 1900 and they just tested, hey, these runners are coming in. They randomly tested their blood and they said, hey, these runners still have good blood glucose. These runners don't. And the runners that don't, they look and feel like crap. So they said, what if we give them sugar? They gave them sugar next time and they said, hey. They actually did better. Then you get into, like, the forties and then you have, like, the Birstrom which now they're doing muscle biopsies and they're saying, hey, it's not just blood sugar, but we actually store sugar in the muscle as glycogen. Well, let's see what happens if we have more glycogen to start with. And sure enough, they ended up doing better. So it's like, now we need to push more sugar to get the blood. And then we also need to push more sugar ahead of time to get the muscle to store more. And then from there, it just went rampant. And it's like, let's see how much carbohydrate we can get people to burn. The number one reason why on some of those if you're going down on a long run, you don't have to bring all these gels. You don't have to bring a lot of that stuff. You could probably, you know, if you're bringing water and you mixed it in that, things like that, sure. But the idea would be you don't have to carry all this extra stuff. And you get into certain running worlds, and some people care about that's where that's the other research that I'm getting into. It's like, well, if you have to carry all this stuff, that stuff adds weight, Hey. I had subjects casually jog for an hour, but if you're in a race and you're running at marathon pace, half marathon pace, does holding a water bottle, which just a lot won't because they're stopping at 8 stations and things like that. But, you know, the general individual might Do those little things modify your energy expenditure? Do they throw off your gate? For me, it's just a convenience factor. I just don't wanna have to bring all that stuff because the last study I just published, which was on that, generation, you can't just live steady stuff. Basically, it I gave them 50 grams before they ran 3 hours, and it just went up a little bit. And then it just stayed in their blood. Like, we didn't collect for almost all the subjects. We didn't collect all of it. And I analyzed how many grams did you burn per minute? It was still showing up in their breath at 3 hours. Whereas the multidextrin group, it just shot up into their blood because it gets absorbed instantly, and then it comes back down. When you get to 60 minutes, And I I had them running at, you know, 6 minutes, six miles per hour. So for a lot of listeners, that might be, you know, 10 minute pace. That might be slow. That means they're gonna burn through some of those stores faster. So that multodextrin is probably sooner, much sooner than 60 minutes. And if you wait till 60 minutes, and you're consuming a fast burning carb, after 60 minutes, it actually dropped below baseline. If you don't have more of that fuel source, now you're running into, like, there's a whole central governor. Like, your brain's gonna say, I don't understand. You Well, I'm expecting you to resupply the blood glucose. And if you don't, that's when it's gonna make you, you know, like, bonking. You shouldn't really bond. Most people should never bond. Like, your body should be really well adapted to be able to not bump. There's a ton of random experts out there that I'll talk about. Like, you should be able you should be able to have a bonk proof proof athlete. Electrolites is a different thing, but you should be out of modulating didn't even talk about hydration, which,

Finn Melanson [01:10:01]: I mean, I could talk around too. There's a lot to talk about. Yeah, One one thing I wanna be and this has been amazing, Patrick. I have sufficiently enjoyed this conversation. I know you've done some work for you can in the past. Are there any other links or or social media, things that you'd wanna point listeners and viewers to before we go about yourself or the work you're doing?

Guest [01:10:24]: I'm I'm working on, like, a website for showcasing a lot of my research. You know, I mean, there's random publications and things like that. I'd say follow me on social media, but I pro Patrick Davitt PhD, but it's virtually nothing nutrition based. Most of what I do, I just became certified as, like, a a Maxwell leadership coach and speaker. Most of what I'm assessed with outside of just nutrition is just quotes and sort of motivation because most of your training, how dialed in are you on nutrition, on what you're supposed to do, a big part of it is for most of the listeners, myself included. A lot of it is, hey, I'm supposed to run tomorrow and I'm supposed to do this. Am I going to do it religiously? That has nothing to do with my nutrition. That has to do with, you know, like, my mental toughness, my fortitude, my ability and desire to want to be regimented discipline. So my social media, people like quotes, I just hike and run-in the woods and just philosophies and related to training related to, you know, running races and stuff like that. I am launching a website petdavit.com. But that's sort of under construction right now. And that's gonna have a little bit of I do have a podcast. It's early in the stages. Some have done 10 episodes called valued pursuit, you know, value the pursuit of a better view. You know, it's like, all walks of life wherever you are, everyone has a different mountain to climb, wherever you are on your mountain or however steep or shallow your mountain is everyone can always better their best. There's always a better version of you out there. Regardless of how far you fall, if you DNF, if you get injured and you have to take time off, there's always a better version for you to pursue and chase. So that's a big part of what I love talking about. Outside of you know, the the the almost annoying nutrition world, which is very important, which is extremely important. We all have to eat But, you know, I think training and nutrition, and then I think I like adding that additional component. So, I mean, on top of that, they can shoot me an email, pdavitat s j u. We can link it in the show notes if you want. Pdavit@sju.edu. Otherwise, petdavit.com should be up or just, you know, hit me a DM on tiktok or Instagram. Patrick Davitt, PhD.

Finn Melanson [01:13:07]: Thanks for listening to the run to the top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Malanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Wasatch Finn and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also, consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify Apple Podcast players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content behind the scenes experiences with our guests, premier access to contests and giveaways, and subscribe to our newsletter by going to runners connect.netback/ podcast. Until next time. I'd be trading.